Radio Galaxy Zoo is halfway through its fourth year. We are going through all the classifications and finalizing our 1st data release. We could not have gotten this far without all of you. From the bottom of our hearts, we THANK YOU.

We have reached 71% completeness and sit just over 1,959,000 classifications. Can we reach 2 million?

As we did with our 1 million classification milestone, we invite you to classify our 2 million-th Radio Galaxy Zoo supermassive black hole. We have been working hard on Radio Galaxy Zoo merchandise (mugs, holographic bookmarks, and stickers). These are up for grabs for those who classify near or on number 2 million.

As always, make a note (click on discuss) if you have found something interesting, confusing, or if you have a question.

Hi everyone! I’m James and I’ve joined the RGZ team as a Communication/Engagement intern. I’m a PhD Candidate at the Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science (CPAS) which is part of the Australian National University (ANU). I’m also a Sessional Academic (read: Tutor and marker) for a couple undergraduate courses covering things from ‘the Public Awareness of Science’ to ‘Science, Risk and Ethics’. And to pay the bills I work for the ANU in an administration role at (essentially) the Business School as well as a few other odd jobs.

But I am at heart an errant astronomer – having double majored in Astronomy/Astrophysics and Science Communications at the ANU for my B.Sci, graduating with Honours in 2015. I grew up in Alice Springs in the middle of Australia and had a purely spectacular night sky to look at. Something I only appreciated when I lived Brazil after graduating high school.

As part of my undergraduate studies I did dabbled a bit in some astronomy research. Firstly I did a project with Dr Charley Lineweaver (if you don’t know Charley, you should!) looking at the (surprisingly fuzzy) distinctions we make between objects in space e.g. planet, dwarf-planet, asteroid, moon. Let’s just say the project didn’t go where I thought it would.

Secondly, as part of an Astronomy Winter School I did research looking for ‘intergalactic stellar bridges’. Essentially chains of stars going from one galaxy to another which may have played a role in stellar formation in galaxies. I think. It was several years ago and the weather was against us when we went to do observations, so it didn’t go anywhere and my memory is pretty fuzzy on the details.

Outside of academia, I was involved in the ANU Black Hole Society (the Astronomy Club), the ANU Physics Society and the Science Communication Society. Also I absolutely love the TV series Cosmos, both the Carl Sagan original which I saw as a teenager and then the Neil deGrasse Tyson remake from a few years ago.

Since my astronomy research didn’t turn out particularly well, I ended up going down the science communication route. I’ve since done research looking into the effects of fictional doctors on young people’s perceptions of healthcare, factors affecting the uptake of vaccinations in Australia and the relationship between people’s perceptions of ‘Superfoods’ and their health behaviours. But I do miss the Astronomy and Astrophysics side of things so I’m super excited to be able to combine my two interests as part of the Radio Galaxy Zoo team.

(Also for some random fun facts about me – I used to host a music program on a Canberra community radio station, I founded the Canberra pop-culture festival ‘GAMMA.CON’ which is basically our local Comic-Con and I fly Hot Air Balloons with the ACT branch of the Scout Association.)

I’ll be hanging around in the forums under the name ‘JRAnsell’ and am keen to hear from you – if you’ve got questions about RGZ specifically or astronomy more broadly let me know! You can also hit me up on Twitter @radiogalaxyzoo or at radiogalaxyzoo@gmail.com.

This post was written as a contribution by Timothy Friel, an undergraduate Australian National University student studying Theoretical Physics and Science Communication. Tim is conducting research into citizen science projects and their social media communication strategies.

Hats off to two of our volunteer participants who have officially been written in the stars.

The Matorny-Terentev Cluster RGZ-CL J0823.2+0333 bears the name of the two citizen scientists who pieced together its structure.

Ivan Terentev and Tim Matorny, two Radio Galaxy Zoo participants from Russia, discovered that a particular radio-source had a line of radio blobs delineating a C-shaped ‘Wide-Angle Tail galaxy’ (WAT). The massive galaxy hosting the super-massive black hole and its associated jets are moving through intergalactic gas, causing the jets to fold back, similar to the way a sky-diver’s hair is shaped by the wind.

This discovery has been published this week in the prestigious scientific journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, with the paper “Radio Galaxy Zoo: discovery of a poor cluster through a giant wide-angle tail radio galaxy” (accessible for free via bit.ly/RGZpaperWAT).

Lead author of the study, Dr Julie Banfield of CAASTRO at The Australian National University (ANU), said that the discovery surprised the astronomers running the program.

“They found something that none of us had even thought would be possible”, said Dr Banfield.

More details of the research team’s response and the next steps for the project can be read in the press release published by CAASTRO (bit.ly/PR14June16).

A huge congratulations must go to the two citizen scientists, Ivan and Tim, for their efforts to work collaboratively to make this discovery. It is great to witness that physical and language barriers have been unable to halt amazing scientific endeavours.

A further thank you must also be noted for the Radio Galaxy Zoo team, in particular the joint project leaders Dr Julie Banfield (ANU) and Dr Ivy Wong (ICRAR at UWA), alongside Dr Anna Kapinska (ICRAR at UWA), Dr Ray Norris (CSIRO/WSU) and all other members of the international project. The team’s continued energy to motivate volunteer participants to develop their own research projects has uncovered the immense potential of citizen science as both a research tool and a method of bringing people together across the globe.

Finally, the Radio Galaxy Zoo team would like to thank the 10,000 volunteers globally who have volunteered to conduct over 1.6 million image classifications over the past two and a half years. The dedication of volunteers to this project has bred a supportive community which has now completed almost 60% of the dataset, a feat unable to be achieved by any single individual.

If you would love to become involved in this international astronomical community, please head to bit.ly/RadioGalaxyZoo1 and begin your journey to uncover the depths of our universe and its wonders, all from the comfort of your own home.

This post was written as a contribution by Timothy Friel, an undergraduate Australian National University student studying Theoretical Physics and Science Communication. Tim is conducting research into citizen science projects and their social media communication strategies.

Meet two of our fantastic Zooniverse members who have been recognised as co-authors for a RGZ submitted paper.

In March 2016, the Radio Galaxy Zoo (RGZ) team submitted a paper which is co-authored by two of our SuperRGZooites. Thanks to the help of citizens around the world, over 1.6 million classifications have been made. However, a very special thanks must go to two citizens who have been greatly involved in our most recent submitted paper.

Meet Ivan Terentev and Tim Matorny, our Citizen Science co-authors.

How did you discover Radio Galaxy Zoo and become involved?

Tim:I had a passion for research and to be involved with generating new knowledge. So I began to look and met [the world of] citizen science and tried many different projects. I was already familiar with the Zooniverse, when I got email about new project – RGZ.

Ivan:I became involved in RGZ from its beginning, more or less, in December 2013, and at that time I was part of the Zooniverse for two years. I was mostly contributing to the Planet Hunters project back then, but occasionally I switched to different projects just to look for what they have to offer. And it was during one of these “Let’s try something different” moments that I discovered RGZ through the announcement post in the Galaxy Zoo blog.

What parts kept you interested and motivated to stay a part of this project?

Tim:The team of scientists and their active participation is an important part. Their blog posts, comments and links have helped me to learn about the project and my involvement with the goals.
Looking for host radio lobes which are separated by a 10′ [minutes] or looking at the behaviour of jets in galaxies clusters is really exciting for me. I like that RGZ covers a wide range of data: radio, optics, IR, X-ray.

Ivan: If we are talking specifically about RGZ, it would be the RGZ Talk community and the fact that RGZ Science team is eager to communicate with simple volunteers and involve them in the research process. But a large portion of my motivation [for RGZ] is the same as for the rest of the Zooniverse projects. You see, I am sci-fi fan and it made me interested in space exploration. I like to watch documentaries about the astronomers, their work and all the amazing stuff in the universe around us and through the Zooniverse I can actually be involved in the process of science and help to shape the future, even if it just by a very tiny fraction. I never thought that something like this would be possible before I discovered Zooniverse.

How do you feel about being a co-author of a scientific research paper?

Tim: I am still amazed and feel more motivated to look for stunning new radio galaxies.

Ivan:This isn’t the first time actually, I am also a co-author for three papers from the Planet Hunters, BUT it is always awesome, like every single time! Although, I keep my head cool over that since most of the work was done by the professional scientists. A huge thanks to them for the acknowledgment of my small contribution in the form of inviting me to be a co-author in their paper. With this RGZ paper, I got a chance to see the whole process of science starting from the simple question “What is that?” and then people trying to figure out what is going on, schedule observations, discussing things and I have been a part of it! All the way through the process, ending with the actual published science article. It was an amazing experience!

Without the contributions made by our volunteers all over the world, we would not have been so successful in our endeavours.

However, we have only reached 57% of our classification target. Head to www.bit.ly/RadioGalaxyZoo1 to become involved and you could be co-authoring another great discovery with us!

Fig. 1. An example of a galaxy where visual identification of the radio components is necessary. the automated algorithms would have classified the non-core emission as independent sources, whereas RGZ volunteers (in agreement with the science team) find all five radio emission components in the upper half of the image to be related to the same source.

As mentioned in our previous article about the paper, we find that the RGZ citizen scientists are as effective as the RGZ science team in identifying the radio sources and the host galaxies. The project now has over 7500 citizen scientists and their contributions are individually acknowledged at http://rgzauthors.galaxyzoo.org

Using the classifications of the WISE infrared host galaxies, we find that the majority of the host galaxies are located in the WISE colour space consisting of elliptical galaxies, quasi-stellar objects (QSOs), and luminous infrared radio galaxies (LIRGs) – see Fig. 2. Upon closer examination of the RGZ objects that are identified as elliptical galaxies in the WISE W1-W2< 0.5 colour space we note that our current sample shows a possible large population of star-forming galaxies and/or ellipticals with enhanced dust – see Fig. 3.

We still have a lot of radio sources in our project that need classification and we hope to continue the great work from all our citizen scientists and science team. Don’t forget to head over to Radio Talk for interesting discussions on objects or some of the science in general.
Thank you once again for your hard work and support throughout the first years of Radio Galaxy Zoo!

One of our scientists Prof. Ray Norris put the call out to the Radio Galaxy Zoo community for a hunt on spiral galaxies hosting powerful radio sources. The first known galaxy of this type is 0313-192, a galaxy much like our Milky Way and has left astronomers baffled.

Keep an eye out for any hourglass sources that seem to be hosted by galaxies that look spiral in the infrared. These objects are incredibly rare in the local Universe (only 2 or 3 known) and we may not see any in Radio Galaxy Zoo, but if someone does find one, that would be worth writing a paper about (with the discoverer as co-author, of course). The rarity of radio-loud spirals is thought to be because the radio jets heat up and disrupt the gas in the spiral, switching off star formation, and turning the galaxy into a “red dead” elliptical. But we might find one or two where the jets have only just switched on and haven’t yet destroyed the spiral. See The radio core of the Ultraluminous Infrared Galaxy F00183-7111: watching the birth of a quasar for another example of this process in its very early stage. So keep your eyes peeled and yell out (very loudly) if you find one!

We are pleased to announce that the Radio Galaxy Zoo community has identified over a dozen potential candidates and we are in the process of following these up.

Have you seen any? Head over to Radio Galaxy Zoo to join in on the hunt and let us know what you find.